Fighting Fires

So far¨"fire" is the theme. Yesterday we were having lunch when a fire truck pulls up in front of the restaurant and firemen proceed in with the hose. Of course, we´re looking around like "what the heck???". No one else in the place was reacting at all. A waitress saw our looks of confusement and explained it was nothing more than filling up the ponds in the garden and to stay calm. It provided us some funny pictures though. Then to today we went to the volcano. On our way up the guide told us just last week the volcano shook and blew out smoke, but hasn´t actually erupted since 2001. Needless to say, I was nervous (especially when fireworks went off and our guide ducked). We made it though. Smoke was coming out and we looked down the crater. The magma can only be seen at night though. That would have freaked me out.
We´ve done a lot of walking around looking at churches and buildings, eating, and drinking. Grananda is so laid back. It reminds us of Antigua but with much more of a community feel and no stress (not that Antigua does). We also took a day trip to Masaya. The people were friendly and since we had a guide we actually got to see more of the people as they live (lots of small homes behind their place of employment). We even went to an artisan´s place where he showed us how to mold clay. Of course, we added to our plate collection (we buy plates in each country we visit, made by local artists only).
And now we need your help. We´re not sure where we are staying....yes we know it is the La Gran Francia Hotel, but listen. It is the nicest hotel in Granada. As a matter of fact Samantha Brown (my idol) stayed there in her "Passport to Latin America" series. It costs more than we would normally spend but we just could not pass up pretending to be Samantha (since she is who I want to be when I grow up). Anyway, we are the ONLY guests in this place!!!! We made friends with soem lawyers from New Yourk last night and they said it was just creepy. So are we staying in Samantha Brown´s crib or the Bate´s Motel????***
Tomorrow we head off to Omotepe for three nights. Not sure of our internet connection from here on out.

***we feel extremely safe, so don´t worry

P.S. The keyboards are a little different here and no spell check so be forgiving of typos.